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Apple Businesses

Darwin Team Answers & Develop on Darwin 152

Posted by Hemos from the and-the-leg-bone-connects-to-the-thigh-bone dept.
Lagos writes "In July Darwin developers at Apple had a call for questions. Their answers were posted on Monday and may be found here. There is some discussion of Apple's place within the Open Source community, though most of the questions answered are more technical." Along the same Darwinian lines, this submission came in: Maktoo writes "Maccentral is reporting that SourceForge.net has added PowerMac G4 Servers running MacOS X 10.1 into their Compile Farm. Now any apps you have going on SourceForge, you can test to see if it'll run on OS X! Gotta love that BSD heritage... OS X is already going to benefit greatly from all the apps it can use in the UNIX/Linux space. This just makes life easier for developers to bring even more."
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Darwin Team Answers & Develop on Darwin More

Darwin Team Answers & Develop on Darwin

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  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @08:15AM (#2351887)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • UMCP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SlamMan ( 221834 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @08:23AM (#2351909)
    If you interested in getting more OS X information in general, the Collge Park chapter of ACM is having a speaker from Apple today to talk about it. Its from 5-6, in the Classrom Building (yes, that actually is the name of one of our buildings), room 0111

  • ?question (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i thought darwin was the version that would run on the x86 and wasn't being offically supported but done as an opensource project?

    • Re:?question (Score:3, Informative)

      by JimRay ( 6620 )
      Kind of. Darwin is actually the core of the new Mac OS, including a kernel based on Mach and BSD4.4 compatible Unix layer. Darwin has been released as open source software. It was built to run on PowerPc systems, all the way up the G4. However, the Darwing team has ported it to the x86. If you have a system that meets their guidelines, you can actually run Darwin on an x86, though I'm not real sure why you'd want to. Some have speculated that with a simple recompile and rewrite of some drivers, Apple could port OS X to the x86. Hope this helps.

      Get more info here: [apple.com]
      http://www.apple.com/darwin/

    • Re:?question (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Darwin is just the name of the core OS consisting of a Apple developed variant of FreeBSD 3.2 with a modified Mach kernel. Apple maintains PPC trees and x86 trees, which are both open source. The GNU/Darwin project is a non-Apple (mostly) effort to develop the x86 version, while Apple primarily develops the PPC version. I assume they share their contributions somehow with a common code base.

      The higher level stuff in Mac OS X: graphics/drawing libs, application frameworks, and applications are all closed source and PPC only.
  • I'm ignorant, I admit, but I'd love to know one thing about Mac OS X:
    If running OS X, can you use linux/unix software?

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @08:56AM (#2351970)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • OS X is mostly like any other UNIX. As long as you have the source code and can recompile it it should work under OS X in most cases.
    • If you install an X server on it, or if you use command line programs you can get alot of Linux/Unix based software to run on OS X. OS X is based on the Mach open source kernel, and various BSD command Line tools, and supports most standard Unix api's so that it is possible to get much of the software made for Linux/unix machines to run (with some trouble, and some poking and proding I'm told)

    • Re:Simple Clarification Needed... (Score:5, Informative)

      by spike666 ( 170947 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @08:58AM (#2351977) Journal
      the simple answer: Sort of.
      the real answer: it all depends...

      the explanation: if you can compile it, you can run it. if its a command line program, you're porting compile is considerably easier. if its Graphical, you've got a bit harder approach since OSX uses Aqua - a graphical display system which has bases in display PDF (some *nixes GUI systems used to be based on Display Postscript - see Solaris' OpenWindows v1.x)

      however, since i've yet to see a linux/bsd / solaris / aix application that uses aqua, if its a gui program its probably doing Xwindows. to run X on X, you gotta do some tricks, theres a few methods, but Darwin has ported XFree86 to X. it runs pretty well too.

      what i've found is that the quickest way to get an aqua app running is to find a java version of the application if possible since the awt/swing -> aqua stuff is abstracted by the osx implementation of java. but this doesnt solve all your woes.

      • Qt on Mac OS X (Score:2, Informative)

        by SeanAhern ( 25764 )
        My favorite GUI library, Qt [trolltech.com] has been ported to Mac OS X [trolltech.com]. I have tried this out with some simple code and it seems to work fairly well. The few bugs that I found have been fixed in the final release, which should come "any day now".

        So any app that's written to Qt (and there's a lot of them out there for Linux) should require just a recompile and work perfectly fine under Quartz/Aqua.

    • Re:Simple Clarification Needed... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Matthias Wiesmann ( 221411 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @09:07AM (#2351987) Homepage Journal

      The short answer is yes: OS X is a Unix variant - so you only need to recompile the software. In fact many tools of OS X are typical Unix programs, apache, perl, gcc, tcsh, etc...

      The long answer is, it depends. While OS X is clearly Unix, there are some issues:

      • OS X is from the BDS Unix familly, so linux programs might need some tweaking.
      • OS X is structured differently from other Unixes, standart paths are different and configuration files are very different.
      • Most Unix system use the X11 standart for GUI. OS X does not use X11 but instead a protocol based on display PDF. While it is possible to install an X11 server (for instance Xfree [mrcla.com]), this is not the default installation.
      Still many Unix programs have been ported to OS X in the rather short timeframe of it's existence(~six months).

    • Re:Simple Clarification Needed... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Check out the Fink [sourceforge.net] project. It's a distribution full of Darwin ports of all the usual Linux/UNIX software with Debian-style package tools.

      Right now, I use a whole bunch of Linux/UNIX software on OS X, primarily Enlightenment, GIMP, XEmacs, XFig, Dia, TeTeX, Ghostscript, and a bunch of little GNOME utils. You can set up X to run side-by-side with Aqua in it's own desktop, or you can have your X apps share the screen with Aqua in "rootless" mode (although that has some quirks).

      I was dual booting with YDL 2.0 for a while, but I don't bother anymore since I've got everything I want installed on OS X. There's even a full GNOME port available. I don't know about KDE though.

    • Re:Simple Clarification Needed... (Score:4, Informative)

      by iso ( 87585 ) <slash@warpze[ ]info ['ro.' in gap]> on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @10:10AM (#2352275) Homepage
      A lot of people are saying "it depends," but I'm not really sure why. Just about any UNIX app that will compile on *BSD (graphical or not) can run on OS X. Get XonX [mrcla.com] and you can run a rootless XFree86 port right next to the Aqua windows. Where does "it depends" even enter this? OS X is as much a UNIX as FreeBSD and Linux are, period.

      The funny thing I've found however, is that after going to great lengths to install beta versions of XDarwin and hacking libraries to get them to compile (this was 6 months ago, all of this is much easier now), I found myself wondering what exactly to do with it. I put a lot of importance on running my old Linux apps, but when it came down to it there was nothing I needed to run under X! I used the Gimp for a bit, but then picked up a copy of Photoshop instead; Mozilla runs better under Aqua than X-Windows; Fire is a great ICQ client and I really like Apple's Mail.app for email; Microsoft Office for the Mac is hands down better than any UNIX clone (or even Office for Windows). The new Office for X looks phenomenal! Everybody using OS X should download the Word for X trial version [microsoft.com] and try it for themselves. StarOffice and the like don't even come close to this newest version of Word for the Mac. Amazing.

      Sometimes I use the xterms in XDarwin just for old times sake, and it's nice to remotely connect to my linux box though the X Server, but what really struck me is how much better apps are in OS X than they are in Linux. Sure a lot of these apps aren't free, but I was never using them because they were free: I was using them because they got the job done well. Now I'm using no X-Windows apps, a handful of OS 9 apps, but the vast majority of the apps I use are OS X native. It's official, I'm a Mac convert :).

      - j
      • Sure a lot of these apps aren't free, but I was never using them because they were free: I was using them because they got the job done well.

        The problem, to most open source advocates, is not that your new applications aren't (beer) free - we all like to see developers well compensated for their efforts - but rather that they aren't (speech) free. You will never see the source code, and the community will never have the benefit of the work of those developers... at some point in the not-so-distant future, you will no longer even be able to "purchase" any license for that software you're using; you'll have to lease it instead. Both Microsoft and Adobe have expressed interest in this new-and-improved revenue model - which they will undoubtedly market (consumer inconvenience aside) as merely their best response to "software piracy".

        Of course you are (speech) free to use the software that you prefer. But I hope you consider the political benefits of (speech) free software to be a point in its favor - above and beyond any price differential.

        -Renard

    • Most BSD programs seem to compile OK, the biggest problem I've had is compiling anything that needs access to device drivers, in which case you need to rewrite the code for the IOKit. What I would do for a DEC network driver right now (tulip in Linux)...

  • Question of the day... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gergi ( 220700 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @09:16AM (#2352011)
    Many people complain about Linux not being user-friendly enough in the GUI. Whether that is true or not is irrevelant to my question. Near everyone can agree that Apple has the best GUI. We're talking about how easy it is to port *BSD/Linux apps to OS X ... how easy do you think it would be for Apple to port Aqua to *BSD/Linux?

    -As beautiful as KDE is, I would drop it in a heartbeat for Aqua.

    • Re:Question of the day... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Matthias Wiesmann ( 221411 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @09:39AM (#2352135) Homepage Journal

      Aqua is not simply a window manager and widget set you can install on top of a X11 server. It relies on a different drawing sub-system

      A simple port would imply rewriting the low-level IOKit functions for BSD/Linux and then recompile the foundations classes, and the Quartz rendering engine and then finally the Aqua layer. While it would not be very difficult, most of the code as been ported to many architectures. I suspect that a lot of work went into optimising Aqua for the PPC processor and the Atlivec unit. Aqua implies a lot of processing, and I would think that a straigtforward port would be very slow.

      Then again if Apple did this, they would roughtly have changed kernels, using the Linux/BSD kernel instead of Mach - what would be the point?

    • i can see apple's concern for canibalizing their market, but by creating say a basic interface with functionality limited to quartz and essential i/o, they could create a mindshare market. windows is the current leader, but everybody would love to ditch the costs and security issues.
      • It seems like every other Apple article posted to Slashdot draws comments from people who want Apple to give away their crown jewels, and have some kind of wacky idea as to why that would be a good idea for Apple.

        Open source is really cool and all that jazz, but there are times when a company's best interests are served by keeping some code proprietary. You don't see Veritas giving away their volume manager, and you won't any time soon, either. Same deal with Apple.
    • On another vein in the same area, while commercial software producers are producing software for OSX, how difficult would it be (how much extra cost involved) to simultaniously make a port for *BSD/linux? Seems to me a slight increase in production cost compared to larger market seems like a good trade off to me
      • You are mistaken! Development for MacOS X can be done with three different APIs of which only two can can be used for GUI apps out of the box and those are not available on other unices (unless Apple decides to finaly support the GNUStep project which is as likely as MS supporting WINE). Besides most Mac OS X apps are programmed in Carbon which is pretty much the old Mac API with support for the new features in X (read as 10 not X11).

  • Potential danger (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nahdude812 ( 88157 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @09:30AM (#2352097) Homepage
    I'm sorry if this is seen as flamebait, but isn't anyone else concerned that potentially all apps that run under Linux would migrate their way to another (commercial) OS with marketing power, and a desire to influence it? Couldn't this be a real threat to Linux? What if everything that ran under Linux suddenly started working under Windows? Wouldn't that reduce the marketability of Linux? If I were a corporation considering switching to a different environment, all be it a more stable one, when I only have people on staff who know the current environment, might I not be inclined to stay with the current environment given that the tools from the new one were available within the current one? Immediate costs would be reduced as there's less of a rollout, even if licensing in the long run is more expensive.

    I think it's a great testament to Open Source that Apple chose to heavily base their OS on it; Apple decision makers aren't idiots, they know a good thing when they see it. But in the end, it takes a piece of the market owned wholly by *nices and allows a commercial entity to have a share of it.
    • Why is this different from commercial compagnies like SUN,HP and IBM that also sell Unix systems?

    • Re:Potential danger (Score:2, Informative)

      by alfredo ( 18243 )
      But what it comes down to is getting work done. Having OSX has not lessened my Linux time. I am doing some graphics on My OSX machine, and surfing in YellowDog Linux on my G3.

      Yeah, and I am using GIMP and Photoshop today, that is Classic(OS9.2.1) OSX, and XDarwin. Let's see ya do that on your GateWay. OSX is about flexibility. Jobs knew that butting heads with Gates is a losing strategy, OSX is an end run. He is uniting the NIX world.

      Insisting on Purity will only slow our movement. It was good to get a solid base, but now it is time to be inclusive.

      Get yourself an iBook and see what OSX is all about.
      • OSX is about flexibility. Jobs knew that butting heads with Gates is a losing strategy, OSX is an end run. He is uniting the NIX world.

        Oh, I absolutely concur! It's a magnificent strategy for Jobs! Absolutely it will boost the market share of MacOS! But will it be at the detriment of Linux? Seriously, I doubt that this will pull many Windows users away, as the majority of them are set in their ways, and it isn't MacOS doing anything new that Windows does. Instead it is MacOS seeping in to a share of the market, and in fact, potentially completely blanketing it, that is currently proudly held by BSD/Linux, when they have greater right/authority/capacity to hold that share of the market, except for the fact that they don't have a marketing department.

        Why is Microsoft the big OS right now? Marketing! Is MacOS (pre-X) better than Windows? In very many ways! Is Linux better than Windows? Also in very many ways! Is Windows better than either of them? Not in very many ways at all! My brother just exceeded 400 days uptime on his home server running RedHat. On Netcraft, of the top 50 uptimes, last I checked, only ONE was Windows, and it was a machine run by Microsoft, with the express purpose of proving Windows' uptime capacity, and not a machine that was being used in a production environment. So why is this inferior OS in possession of the largest share of the desktop environment, with an inferior less stable environment that Linux, and a less intuitive, more difficult to use interface than MacOS? You better have guessed it by now (I'm such a cynic), MARKETING. MacOS is absorbing a lot of the strategic advantage of BSD/Linux, and inserting it into their marketing machine under the name MacOS.

        My concern is over whether this pushes BSD/Linux out of the picture, as they are about operational quality not visual quality while OSX focuses a lot more on visual quality (which has proven to be an exceptionally marketable aspect; translucent windows and a warping docking bar, wow, way better than some boring uptime!) and leaves the operational quality to the BSD programmers, who are pouring their hearts and souls in to a project, which Apple might, in the end, turn around and stab them in the heart with.

        Very loose simile: It's like the greatest swordsmiths (Open Source programmers) on earth collectively working for years to create the greatest sword ever for a king (the public, and perhaps Apple), who kills the smith with it to prevent the smith from making a better one. Your greatest source of pride might very well be your undoing in an irony that belongs in fairy tales. (This is not to imply that Apple has its goal laid out to squash BSD, indeed, BSD is proving to be a great aid to them, thus the loosness of the simile.)
        • Apple isn't that huge, and doesn't appear to be doing anything that could be construed as unfair play. If Mac OS X is detrimental to Linux, it will only be because people view it as a better product. The way to fix that is pretty straightforward, even if actually doing it will take some work: make Linux better.

          Competition with a really polished desktop Unix OS can only help Linux in the long run. Although OS X will likely do quite nice things for Apple's market share, I seriously doubt that everyone is going to abandon x86 hardware, or that OS X will be ported to such hardware any time soon. This means there's still going to be a huge potential market for Linux, and being able to learn from OS X will be of much help in the battle against Windows.
        • Why is Microsoft the big OS right now? Marketing!

          I think this is clearly wrong. The growth of that operating system was mostly the result of a deliberate strategy to exploit the network-effects of controlling APIs, protocols, document formats, and distribution channels. Marketing played a role, but does not deserve singular credit for the success of Windows.

          • Why is Microsoft the big OS right now? Marketing!
            I think this is clearly wrong. The growth of that operating system was mostly the result of a deliberate strategy to exploit the network-effects of controlling APIs, protocols, document formats, and distribution channels. Marketing played a role, but does not deserve singular credit for the success of Windows.
            Ok, good point, how about this: Why is Microsoft the big OS right now? Ethics free corporatism!
            :) Oops, was that Karma whoring?
          • Marketing was part of the story. However, as has been pointed out elsewhere in /. the main reason why MS is big today is piracy. Everyone used M$ products cos everyone else does. What percentage of MS Office users have a legit copy at home? People know how to use M$ products cos they learn at home on a pirate copy. With XP on the horizon, M$ is actively shooting at its own feet. Many people will not be able to upgrade, because registration over the net is simply not feasible for them. (eg most of Africa and China) They will go on using Office97. People will have to stick to W97 for compatibility, because important customers cant read anything later. At last the Upgrade path is NOT M$ - Suddenly Apple gets a second bite :-) Apple doesnt need the piracy, because once people realise M$ is not the only shop in town, they will shop around. REMEMBER - THE WORLD DOES NOT STOP AT THE SHORES OF THE USA! (And even if you have a 56k modem, its not much use if you dont have a phone at all.)
          • The growth of that operating system was mostly the result of a deliberate strategy to exploit the network-effects of controlling APIs, protocols, document formats, and distribution channels.

            All of which I'd classify as marketing. (esp. the distribution channel bit, which along with Pricing is exactly what marketing is supposed to worry about.)

            Of course, most folks here think of marketing as equal to advertising. But that's why Microsoft has 'good' marketing, and Apple/IBM/etc have 'bad' marketing. In other words, when MS's slogan was "Windows Everywhere!", they really meant it.

        • Re:Potential danger (Score:3, Interesting)

          by dolanh ( 64212 )
          As of right now I don't see too much of a conflict, considering the products that MacOSX is encroaching upon are mostly positioned at the desktop market, whereas BSD/Linux main strength is still primarily on the server end.

          When BSD/Linux gets a stronger desktop following (I give it about two years), we could revisit your argument.

        • Re:Potential danger (Score:1, Flamebait)

          by whjwhj ( 243426 )
          and leaves the operational quality to the BSD programmers, who are pouring their hearts and souls in to a project, which Apple might, in the end, turn around and stab them in the heart with.

          What a bunch of crap! What utter bullshit. The fact that the poster was modded up indicates to me that we have less than perfectly bright moderators out there.

          • Re:Potential danger (Score:1, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            In stead of simply defaming the statement, please tell us why you disagree with it. What's most astounding is that your comment, with out any meat in it whatsoever got modded up, even more so than someone who posted an opinion with which you do not agree, and so (surprise!) believe should not have been modded up.

            Simply disagreeing with an opinion does not make the opinion invalid, and moderation points aren't intended to allow the moderators to improve people's comments with which they agree, but instead to improve people's comments which make some valid point, or raise a valid concern, grounded in truth, or agreeing with their own opinion or not.
        • I don't see why or how will Apple backstab developers.
          Darwin/BSD developers know that their work, if it's any good, will help Apple make lots of money. Realistically, I don't think anyone is planning to use Darwin separate from OSX. We help out anyways (at least I do) because we see the potential of a really nice OS coming out of this.
          I just want a great OS, not a corporation-free state.
          My 2 cents,

          Rob
          • Well said, valid point, this deserves mod up!

            I didn't intend to imply that Apple will necessarily backstab the BSD developers, let alone plan to for the future. As I said in another post on this thread, BSD is clearly adding a lot to OS-X, and they would be foolish to intentionally squash it. Looks like I might have unintentionally forged a mini holy war here. My original intent was to basically say "Watch out for embrace and extend"

        • I'm afraid that I don't see your point. Apple is now just another commercial unix vendor, much like Sun or IBM. The only difference is that they're targeting the desktop market instead of servers. How does this threaten the open source community, or specifically, BSD?

          Are BSD coders going to drop everything and start hacking on Darwin? Not likely. Darwin is pretty nifty, but projects like OpenBSD have different goals. People might lose interest in Linux PPC, but that will only happen if Apple puts out a superior (and free) product.

          Besides which, Apple's been a pretty good neighbor. They've given a lot back to FreeBSD and GCC, and that says a lot. The traditional way of squashing a technology is "embrace and extend", but that requires your extensions to be closed-source. Darwin is totally open, and the contributions to GCC and FreeBSD are anything but closed.

          Your rant seems more born from fear than reason. Why are you scared of OS X? It's a full-featured unix that my mom can use. Why is that threatening?

        • I just want to contradict the perception here that BSD sprung entirely from the 'great swordsmiths' of Open Source programmers.

          BSD UNIX was a US government funded project intended to advance the state-of-the-art for the computer industry as a whole. The entire intent was to allow commercial companies to 'steal' the code to improve interoperability -- in fact iconic BSD developers like Bill Joy got very rich doing just that. BSD code is used in virtually every OS -- it's a significant chunk of every commercial Unix, probably a bunch in GNU, and there's small bits in Windows, as has been repeatedly discussed.

          Not to take away anything from the people who deUNIXifed BSD and have been doing a excellent job maintaining it ever since. Just that Apple won't be the first nor the last to use BSD code in their OS. Compared to every other commercial user of BSD code, they've been saints.

    • Re:Potential danger (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Platform independence is a GOOD thing!

      The software that runs under Linux is already available on plenty of other platforms. In fact, a lot of it was developed on other platforms, including the various BSD flavors, Solaris, IRIX, UNIXware, etc. Most of the command line stuff even runs on Windows NT & 2000 with Cygwin. And numerous ports are available for BeOS, Atheos, QNX, etc.

      There's nothing wrong with the software being ported to commercial platforms. All that means is that there may be more people using and contributing to the software. And remember that the majority of the UNIX world is still commercial. Linux is still a niche player.

      Linux is a means to an end, not an end in itself. This is an OS were talking about here, not a religion. World domination is a joke, remember? Seriously, Linux will have to compete based on the merits of the platform, and the less we tie software to a particular platform, the better.
      • Touche! However, "and the less we tie software to a particular platform, the better," so what advantage is there to Linux over other OS's if everything that Linux does can be done by them as well, in a completely identical manner? It's a moral dilemma for me, with out other OS's providing their features to Linux, and Linux providing all their features to other OS's, Linux itself holds no individual advantage.

        Of course, I'm getting bogged down in thinking of Linux as a distribution, not a kernel. Linux is a kernel; it's a core OS. The software that was developed FOR Linux, while significantly adding to its marketability, does not COMPRISE Linux. That might be considered a weakness of relying entirely on the Open Source movement (which I wholeheartedly believe in), in that any advantage that you hold, your competitors can very easily absorb... embrace and extend... frightening.
        • > [W]hat advantage is there to Linux over
          > other OS's if everything that Linux does can
          > be done by them as well, in a completely
          > identical manner?

          Now you're getting it! Open source is the graveyard of revenue-producing intellectual property -- when an idea is sufficiently well-understood and unencumbered by patents, it is implemented in open-source and thus commoditized.

          Apple understands that unix's base functionality is no longer a source of proprietary advantage. That's why they weren't afraid to open their kernel and BSD userland source. But their graphics and user interface software contain real innovation and valuable proprietary ideas.

          Open source software can provide considerable value to the world by providing a baseline. Part of the idea of BSD-licensed software is that no new implementation has any excuse for being worse than the BSD-licensed implementation, because they can use the BSD-licensed implementation with basically no strings attached.
    • It's an interesting point, and worth thinking about.

      However, how many Apache-based servers are running under Windows rather than *nix? It's been available for some time, yet most folks running Apache are doing so specifically to get out of the Microsoft hole.

      Plus, in the case of open source software, a big part of it is being open. This applies to other OSes as well as within *nix-land. Sure some Mac users get to play with your toys (and let me tell you, I'm enjoying it!). This isn't the end of the world, particularly as Apple (and other commercial *nix vendors) are pretty in tune with the open source scene and their role in it.

      What is more dangerous is if one of these companies starts breaking the GPL and extending the software (making it incompatible with open versions) and then pushing it as the standard. (Just as Microsoft has done with Java, web standards, etc...)

      As ever, be vigilant, but don't bundle your undies just yet.

      • Very well said!

        One comment:
        iNik said, 'As ever, be vigilant, but don't bundle your undies just yet.'
        nahdude812 points to the subject; Potential Danger
        nahdude812 said, 'I'm just keeping an eye on the future, someone needed to bring it up!'
    • Apple is putting unixalike machines on the desks of every Mac user in the world, and you're concerned about this hurting Linux's market share?

      Don't quit your day job to be a strategic consultant, is all I can say.
    • But in the end, it takes a piece of the market owned wholly by *nices and allows a commercial entity to have a share of it.
      There are two distinctive and very different markets here: desktops and servers. And to be honest, BSD and Linux have never had a chance as an old fashioned desktop operating system; there's just not enough organization to get software manufacturers to build applications for them. But as servers, BSD/Linux don't have a real competitor.

      I think that rather than providing a potential danger to Linux and BSD, OS X will provide the perfect compliment to them; it will actually strengthen their position as servers in the office space.

      Before OS X, if you needed to use a desktop for say, something like editing resume.doc (because you can't be certain that those annomalies Star Office puts into documents won't be there again, and some ass-clown in HR wants everything to be .doc), you started up the old token Windows box, or booted up from your FAT partition. If you were at the office, chances are a Windows box is all you've got anyway.

      With OS X, there's no need to have two boxes, or to have half of your disk taken up by FAT partitions. All the tools are there, and with the FreeBSD ports tree, most of the applications that you know from Linux are still there.

      By running a VNC server on localhost, you can have an X session open and be working with The Gimp or gplot at the same time you're working with Illustrator, Maya, or Word.

      The real benefit OS X gives is to those who know how to use UNIX. No more sad sessions in a MS-DOS command prompt window. Among the many benefits are all the tools, a full man page set (no more cls --help bull$h1t), SSH client and server already installed, and the ability to utilize the FreeBSD ports tree.

      And for a systems administrator, having the ability to utilize those tools means all the difference.

      Anyway, when was the last time you saw a G4 used as a web server?
      I guess I must be a piece of the market that Apple has stolen away. I ran FreeBSD for nearly two years as the only operating system on my laptop. Server Desktop Using OS X, I have all the command line server tools on my desktop. I don't have to confine myself to the twenty some sad "command prompt" commands available under Windows. Where BSD and Linux shine is as se

    • The advantage of Linux is not the apps, it's the OS itself. Windows is unstable, expensive, buggy, and insecure compared to Linux. Anyone using Linux has chosen it for specific reasons that do not apply the Microsoft operating systems.

      The real threat is the other direction. If Windows apps ran on other platforms wouldn't that reduce the marketability of Windows?
    • This is a great thread. My view on the subject is that OS X does have the potential to take some market share from open source OSes.

      If Apple somehow gained Microsoft-like market share I would be truly concerned. I think almost any company would do unsavory things with that kind of market power.

      Ultimately, however, I am convinced that OS X will do much more to harm M$ than linux. Why? Because massive market share is something that's greatest benefits are to companies like M$ that are just trying to profit. In the open-source community, market share may help a project gain testing and credibility, but the goal is to make great software, not get rich. The way I see it, open source hackers are open source hackers, if they get drawn off of a certain project, it is most likely because there is something more interesting/better to work on. The value in open-source software is the hours these people have put into it, and thanks to the open source nature, that value will always be present for free, no matter what product happens to have the current lead in marketshare.

      The only way I could see linux users losing out is if somehow all the open source hackers got hired to write proprietary software full-time (meaning 80 hours a week, cuz I think most of them already work 40 :), which I think depends on factors that have nothing to do with OS X.

  • To reward the developers... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Teddyman ( 307626 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @10:06AM (#2352253)
    They should give Darwin Awards [darwinawards.com] to the most hard-working of them.
  • This is really more of a rant than flame bait, but I'm going to throw this in here just to see who bytes.

    Speaking as a Mac user who uses Linux at my job, why should I bother with OS X? IMHO Linux is much more flexible and seems to me to have more of a future in business than Apple or OS X ever will. I was very exited when Apple bought NeXT, but after waiting 5 years, OS X 1.0 just left me cold. Why should I spend time learning about OS X when I could be honing my Linux skills?
    • Question: why does it have to be either/or? The reality is, Unix system administration will be a benefit to you on BOTH systems. I've been a mac user for nearly 10 years and a Linux user for over 5. When I first loaded the OS X preview, I was amazed at how comfortable I was with the command line. Granted, there are some major differences between the two systems, but there are a lot more similarities.

      OSX is going to give you support from major vendors--Adobe, Macromedia, Microsoft--with the kind of desktop software that many people need. I'm a web developer, I love Macromedia products. Try not to flame me. However, I also build dynamic sites using PHP, MySQL and Java. The ability to perform both of these tasks from a single machine--my G3 laptop--is awesome.

      The reality is, Linux is going to have a very hard time garnering this kind of desktop software support. Open Source alternatives, such as OpenOffice or any wysisyg html layout tool, are always a step behind, running just to stand still with the comercial competitors. I love linux--on my webserver. I can't design with it.

    • Use whatever works for you (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If I was a foreman at a construction company, I wouldn't force the bricklayers to use hammers just because the carpenters are really productive with them. A computer is a tool. Use whichever one is right for the job.

      Alot of my job revolves around web development. For me, OS X is perfect because I have Apache, PHP, Perl, MySQL, Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, and vi all on the same machine. I tried to use Linux, but alot of my time was spent dual-booting.

      You probably do other things, so another machine might be better suited for what you do. Whatever. Better or worse is all relative to what you want to accomplish.
    • Let me know when MS Word for Linux comes out.

      Yes, Linux has penetrated the corporate server market. But it has not penetrated the corporate desktop market.

      OS X has the potential to do so. Time will tell - it may not, but at least it's got a chance.

      Wade

    • Re:Ask Slashdot - OSX? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      High quality, full featured commercial applications. Mac OS X is getting them, Linux isn't.

      Pretty much all the software you can run under Linux you can run under OS X as well. The converse is not true. That's the real selling point. The pretty interface and friendly development APIs are nice too.

    • With MacOSX, you get unix with a mac interface. With all the other unix desktop environments, you get unix with a windows interface. While much talk is made in the linux community about "yes, we've got skins for apple this and mac that" the widget layouts, keyboard shortcuts, and other thingies about GNOME/KDE are all Windows carbon copies. If you don't like anything that resembles a windows interface, linux may not be right for you. On the other hand, there's nothing preventing you from going into the GNOME/KDE sources and "deredmonifying" stuff.
    • If by "honing my Linux skills" you mean programming, web serving, or being an admin, then yes it would be stupid to switch to an OS dependent on an expensive set of hardware that is sure to remain niche forever.

      If by "honing my Linux skills" you mean doing stuff on your computer at home that doesn't matter what OS you are using, then it really doesn't fucking matter

      If by "honing my Linux skills" you mean printing color documents from the $100k printing press connected to your iMac and needing CMK support when you know fucking well that the printed image is always going to be a different color than what you see on the screen anyhow, then you should spend the $100 for OSX and $500 for photoshop or just wait one year until CMK is supported in the Gimp

  • So, OS X 10.1 has /dev/random now? (Score:3, Informative)

    by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisum.gmail@com> on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @12:10PM (#2352869) Homepage Journal
    From the FAQ:

    Q: Porting Unix software to Mac OS X, one thing that is often sorely missed (especially in cryptographic tools) is /dev/random, a system-level entropy provider. Adding a decent /dev/random would be a Good Thing.
    A: Although /dev/random is not in the latest Darwin binary release, it is now in the kernel sources available in the Darwin CVS repository. It took us a bit of time to release it because we wanted to be sure of its quality. Check it out and enjoy!


    So does this mean that OS 10.1 has a /dev/random now, and I can chuck away the entropy daemon I've been using?

    Anyone (early 10.1 users) know the answer?
  • Although I've been able to compile lots of UNIX apps to OSX like ircII, lynx, MySQL, Xfree86, etc.. I wasn't able to get GtkRadiant compiled for X.. anyone got this working? If so, it would be the first set of quality Quake3 map/skin editing tools accessible to Mac users (finally) ... however I couldn't get past "make"-ing setupdb..
  • I had a wee look around the darwin site, and in particular their bug tracking area. I must say it's pretty feeble -- immediately the thought sprung to mind that they should be using bugzilla. Anyone know whey they appear to be growing their own rather than using an already extremely capable system like bugzilla?
    • Because Apple already has an internal bug tracking database called Radar, with a full app UI instead of a web UI.

      The darwin pages that interface to it are rather primative. But slowly, they're becomming better integrated with Radar.

      Opening up Radar to the public is not an option. With millions of bugs related to every aspect of Apple's business, darwin represents only a tiny sliver of the active Radar bugs.

      -pmb
  • Another great resource for X11 support (and debian install apps) is

    http://fink.sourceforge.net/

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